Skinny's thread

But for the words of Brecht and Hardy
I am alone, each night.
As the spires of Oxford pierce my retinas,
they submit. I submit. No more.

I seek out instead brisk starlight,
crunching black gravel underfoot, and soon
strains of Rachmaninov become my guide.

The weather-vane stares at a sleeping window
for the third night running.
The legend says that when that happens
hiding under the bed won't help.

Last time there was a car accident. So we believe it.

Bach now, and the concrete floodlit.
the stable block door opens with a creak, and slams.
A cacophony of music hits my poor ears,

but then sanctuary, in the darkness at the end.
Close the door behind, find the sherry.
Spend the evening cloning fingertips
with candlewax, showing the best ones to Jesus
in his agony.

 

Jasmine.
That's the scent!
I rubbed oil on her arms one night
and made her laugh.

My heart and palms tingled for a week.

Shy,
she would rise early, before the others.
Dawn light lit white underwear
and my eyes.

She didn't know I admired her hair,
a tawny wheat sheaf
in the monochrome morning.

Later, she was seduced by
the barrel lungs of an opera singer.
Those fruitbat eyes often quivered
doubtful and fragile.

I watched her hack up anorexic hairballs,
made her laugh, come to me
when the dark was so deep that only
touch told us we were there.

I'd pull the yellow babydoll over her head
and kiss her brow when no-one could see.

She only smiled at the beginning.
Then off came the hair, like Samson,
and my redeeming features were too weak.

She entered the hall like statue. Dressed for mourning.
Draped her black neurosis round her, finally broken.

There was one more kiss, in darkness.
I was coated in jasmine, and her lips sparked off our coma.

 

Picked me out a good gun.
I can hear the Indians in the valley
snapping their firewood and grazing their horses.

I boarded up the windows
with them long nails you left. Now I'm sat here waiting.

Saloon's kinda empty.

Never fixed that table. Figured what's the point.
That bloodstain's fading now.
Just like you said it would.

Jack Daniels'n me, we got the whole thing covered.

 

littleskinny, i'm jealous.

You're poetry is absolutely beautiful.

Reading them have inspired me to start working on my own.

Beautiful...

 

That makes me really happy Shane - I look forward to reading what you come up with!

 

Tell me how it works,
this communion.

The little pamphlet has two versions.
Which is which? And why?

And why do you stand there to read the Gospel,
is it so you're one of us?
Why then the pantomime garb?

Why do we wait patiently in a line
to participate. And why do they get wine,
and I get a pat on the head from gnarled hands?

Next time I'll nod and meet his eye,
and he'll tip it towards me murmuring.
I'll sip and await the thunderclap.

I've not jumped through the hoops to earn this reward.
I'm not deemed ready to partake of the flesh.

God didn't do a thing in the days and weeks that followed.
Not that I could tell, at least.

Made me wonder if He even noticed
the silly men in their silly hats
with their incense and chanting
and hanging of the host.

Or maybe He just didn't notice me.

 

You must have washed up on this shore
with great hopes. Your nurture, blind, and I.
I didn't know
that underneath my bleak moor
lurked a shadow darker than the wind.

I knew that a great brooding cried out in my dreams,
and that my dark romantic play was treacherous.

I laughed that there was someone in my loft,
but I thought that you had dusted off Miranda,
with your gentle fingers and brilliant mind.
But baser beings were disturbed,
and wander, lonely, through my thoughts.

The old man, as a gypsy, taunts you,
tries to tell your fortune through deceit,
while Caliban sleeps sluggish in my heart.

 

Fragrant and innocent. Great work.

"She didn't know I admired her hair,
a tawny wheat sheaf
in the monochrome morning."

I love re-reading your work. So visual and stunning.

 

This one packs a mean surprise jab to the gut. I initially thought this was about waiting for the plane in the departure lounge and how boring it was there. I like the way you used this to describe a relationship steadily sinking from romance to boredom.

 

Great stuff here LS! I had something very similar to Musical Block, wish I could find it, but yours was better anyway, made me smile! I especially liked these lines...

My favorite of your latest batch was To Someone... gorgeous unexpected
images, great tumbling flow, really really good piece of work! And those last two stanza's.... powerful! Thanks for sharing these!

 

well done....

"Next time I'll nod and meet his eye,
and he'll tip it towards me murmuring.
I'll sip and await the thunderclap." A feast of sounds.

 

After the march
he was bruised and waxy like the
apples, old and sleepy in the grass.

Placing his placard against the woodpile,
he clutched an aching back and yawned,

clomped into the kitchen,
sat to sigh before the aga.
He had no word for his faithful friend,
shunned the offered paw, instead
reached into his pocket for baccy and pipe.

Each pack and puff was slow, a hole
in a backbencher, in the ballot box.
He heard the hounds and bayed with them,
taunting the law, hoarse.

 

The white tipped tails are rising stars
as you watch them race across night sky
and round the artex coving.
You're shackled now.
Housemartins fly blue cartoon rings with every cut and numb.

Dolly mixtures sticky on the carpet pile:
blood sugar low makes this whole thing tempting
but a slurp of Napoleon and I am overcome.
Elbows crack and flutter, those red marks burning
like the host of heaven collapsed into your lap
and chased reason out the window,

laughed as it ran naked through the fields.
This is your siesta before Monday unfolds.

I've a box of untold secrets but they're all in code
and I need to crack this on your back using your
spiral sighs, sopping sheets, the equation in your
ruffled hair, the enigma spelt out in gasps and piercing silence.

See my teeth. Carved on the dashboard of Italian racecars
but that's not the point. I've been tanned the colour of those seats
and your cigarette is shaking.

It's late, smoky.
Can't see the way through this glass ceiling without
bomb blast curtains, bed and all, down three floors into the basement,
still sleeping.
Iron spike drilled into my heel, that's beauty baby.
Lacerations over my knee 'cause I tipped you head first into this
and you look good in leather.

 

Greatly visual as usual. Could really see and experience the poem through all the sounds, images, atmosphere and smell. Loved the whole 3rd stanza and especially
"He had no word for his faithful friend,
shunned the offered paw, instead
reached into his pocket for baccy and pipe"

 

Countryside Alliance, up my alley, ‘tis nicely put,
and yowzer, the untitled abject of affection boggles me mind!
the wicked good continues!

 

Thanks to everyone who keeps popping in and leaving such encouraging feedback - I'm glad you enjoyed some of my latest offerings!

 

I ponder, anxious, the form the genie will take this time.

Chipping away at my breastbone,
his little helpers curl my toes and make my eyes pink.

Will I argue that the sun goes round the earth?
That education died with Hitler?
That the articles of faith make sense?

Or will I cling to my interior's coal face,
in a blackened sulk, the bulb overhead dead and buried?
Will I build a castle out of sticklebricks, and grow a matching shell of spines?
Will I roll naked like a bouncing bomb into your defences,
try to bring you down with jabs and treacherous caresses?

Will the weight of my aching transmit,
through my thighs to your hip,
my irritating kisses burn a route through your cheek to affection?

 

Excellent, as usual. Thanks for posting it.

 

Thanks a lot

 

The lavender is weary.
It does not attract butterflies
in its plastic pot, and so has given up.

Fading purple brushes the wall nonchalantly,
tedious, timed out. My urban chitter is
not the same as birdsong or debating worms,
and the green softens further, leans further,
disappears inside itself. It will not drink,
but lets the water flow across muddy toes
and pool in the saucer, stubborn.

It will not last long, this hunger strike.
Resistant to frost, but not this window seat
beneath the air conditioning vent, the lavender
crumbles beneath my affectionate deadheading.